The path to citizenship is a crapshoot.
Whether an asylum seeker gets to stay in the US can often come down to the luck of the draw when it comes to which judge will determine their fate.
New York has one of the nation’s widest gaps between a strict jurist who denies nearly all who come before them — and another with a veritable open door policy.
The state’s most lenient judge, Vivienne Gordon-Uruakpa, appointed in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration, has granted asylum 92.4% of the time since 2020, according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s TRAC program.
John Burns, appointed by former Attorney General Bill Barr in 2020 during the first Trump administration, was the toughest immigration judge, the records showed.
He ruled in favor of asylum just 2.6% of the time, according to the Syracuse data, and hears cases at the Federal Plaza Immigration Court.
Nationwide, the grant rate is about 59 percent.
Gordon-Uruakpa heard 775 asylum cases between 2020 and most of 2025, granting asylum for 716, signing off on 32 other types of relief such as withholding removal or another temporary status. She denied entry to just 27 people.
Nearly 40 percent of those seeking asylum before Gordon-Uruakpa came from China, records show.
New York gets numerous cases of people claiming asylum and persecution in the People’s Republic of China. Others came from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and El Salvador.
“It’s a mighty big gap” between judges, said Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Policy and a former immigration judge.
“Maybe one judge just gets very meritorious cases and maybe one judge gets non-meritorious cases. But it is a significant issue. Which is why I say I’m glad that immigration judges are the first adjudicators, not the last adjudicators.”
The government can intervene to try to appeal a judge’s ruling to grant asylum.
Gordon-Uruakpa, 66, attended Fordham University in the Bronx and the Howard University School of Law. Her background is in legal aid and criminal defense. Her exact status was not clear and she couldn’t be located on a list of current judge assignments.
Burns attended Beloit College in Wisconsin and got his law degree at Fordham, deployed to Kuwait and Iraq during Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Spartan Shield, and has served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the New York Army National Guard.
During the same 2020-2025 period, Judge Burns decided 1,128 asylum cases, granting asylum for 29, providing for 15 other types of relief, and denying relief to 1,084 people.
The largest share of his cases also came from China, at 27% of his case load. Next came Bangladesh, Mexico, Ecuador, and El Salvador.
The Post has reached out to both judges for comment and the The Executive Office for Immigration Review said it doesn’t comment on “judge decision making.”
